It’s strange when famous people die

Picnic

Knee-deep in the Pacific O:

Sandy feets:

Brophy’s again, sunny Thursday:

Make way for ducklings:

Dark chocolate midnight snack:

Goodnight Moon:

A dream fulfilled:

Park picnic:

And a funny one by Bukowski:

$$$$$$

I’ve always had trouble with
money.
this one place I worked
everybody ate hot dogs
and potato chips
in the company cafeteria for
3 days before each
payday.
I wanted steaks,
I even went to see the manager
of the cafeteria and
demanded that he serve
steaks. he refused.

I’d forget payday.
I had a high rate of absenteeism and
payday would arrive and everybody would
start talking about
it.
“payday?” I’d say, “hell, is this
payday? I forgot to pick up my
last check…”

“stop the bullshit, man…”

“no, no, I mean it…”

I’d jump up and go down to payroll
and sure enough there’d be a
check and I’d come back and show it
to them. “Jesus Christ, I forgot all about
it…”

for some reason they’d get
angry. then the payroll clerk would come
around. I’d have two
checks. “Jesus,” I’d say, “two checks.”
and they were
angry.
some of them were working
two jobs.

the worst day
it was raining very hard,
I didn’t have a raincoat so
I put on a very old coat I hadn’t worn for
months and
I walked in a little late
while they were working.
I looked in the coat for some
cigarettes
and found a 5 dollar bill
in the side pocket:
“hey, look,” I said, “I just found a 5 dollar
bill I didn’t know I had, that’s
funny.”

“hey, man, knock off the
shit!”

“no, no, I’m serious, really, I remember
wearing this coat when
I got drunk at the
bars. I’ve been rolled too often,
I’ve got this fear… I take money out of
my wallet and hide it all
over me.”

“sit down and get to
work.”

I reached into an inside pocket:
“hey, look, here’s a TWENTY! God, here’s a
TWENTY I never knew I
had! I’m
RICH!”

“you’re not funny, son of
a bitch…”

“hey, my God, here’s ANOTHER
twenty! too much, too too
much… I knew I didn’t spend all that
money that night. I thought I’d been
rolled again…”

I kept searching the
coat. “hey! here’s a ten and
here’s a fiver! my God…”

“listen, I’m telling you to sit down
and shut up…”

“my God, I’m RICH… I don’t even need
this job…”

“man, sit down…”

I found another ten after I sat down
but I didn’t say
anything.
I could feel waves of hatred and
I was confused,
they believed I had
plotted the whole thing
just to make them
feel bad. I didn’t want
to. people who live on hot dogs and
potato chips for
3 days before payday
feel bad
enough.

I sat down
leaned forward and
began to go to
work.

outside
it continued to
rain.

~Charles Bukowski, from Love Is A Dog From Hell, 1977 Black Sparrow Press

Beach Bum

Apparently i’ve become a beach bum, spending my days strolling Butterfly looking for beach-glass. And cooking.

Sautee:

Broiled fish & tons of Brussels sprouts:

TONS of blue-green at Butterfly today, thanks to the storm:

And even a rare RED:

Daily Buk:

Your unfaithful servant,

~Brier

Mockingbird, wish me luck.

Sunday big salad dinner, after three hours of tennis then nine holes of golf. Gonna sleep well tonight.

My new 95-cent thrifted cap, which i love like mad.

AKA Bukowski:

Sparkly February Summer:

Still life with violin:

Tennis day:

Ok, enough. Happy love-day tomorrow!

I let myself dream

Random friday-morning photo spree.

And today’s Bukowski:

A Stethoscope Case

Not ‘Shopped, just mis-focused. Still loverly.

Slip them into different sleeves

Old record labels are lovely. Here’s some from today’s thrifting jaunt:

Today’s lunch was grilled swiss & turkey with tomatoes & pesto:

Moisturizer racing stripe:

Some randoms:

And finally a pretty Bukowski:

Happy Friday my friends.

The Straightforward Mermaid & other oddities

Today i ran across this poem in the New Yorker and had to share. Click to embiggen:

Sushi at the harbour:

The spicy tuna roll made me sweat a bit.

Then to farmer’s market:

Isn’t Agatha Christie a cool old dame?

And i love Bukowski’s epitath: “Don’t Try”.

Tomorrow is Wednesday. xoxo.

Raise high the roof beam, carpenters

My favorite passage from Raise High got stuck in my head, so my interpretation is here:

And the only other thing of worth i did today was to have a few slices at my favorite pizza joint, Tony’s in Ventura:

Simply the best. Thank you Tony!!

And i’ll leave you with a short Bukowski:

“your poems about the girls will still be around
50 years from now when the girls are all gone,”
my editor phones me.

dear editor:
the girls appear to be gone
already.

I know what you mean

but give me one truly alive woman
tonight
walking across the floor toward me

and you can have all the poems

the good ones
the bad ones
or any that i might write
after this one.

I know what you mean.

do you know what i mean?

Bukowski on breakups

Good evening from the land of lost mittens! Some photos on this dark wintery Thursday evening.

Morning read:

Vintage dental ribbon from a fun by-appointment-only antique store up north:

(The best for cleaning between the fangs)

Backpack fulla Sharpies:

And check this site of funny iPhone auto-correct hilarity.

And, finally, for the lovelorn lovers out there — Bukowski on breakups:

“I thought about breakups, how difficult they were, but then usually it was only after you broke up with one woman that you met another. As a writer, I had to taste women in order to really know them, to get inside of them. I could invent men in my mind because I was one, but women, for me, were almost impossible to fictionalize without first knowing them. So I explored them as best I could and I found human beings inside. The writing would be forgotten. The writing would become much less than the episode itself until the episode ended. The writing was only the residue. A man didn’t need to have a woman in order to feel as real as he could feel, but it was good if he knew a few. Then when the affair went wrong, he’d feel what it was like to be truly lonely and crazed, and thus know what he must face, finally, when his own end came.

I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, “I’m going to pee…”; hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking, talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes, the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3 AM; being told you snore, hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce, but always carrying on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she’s now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends, your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side, and her doing the same; sleeping together…

There were no judgments to be made, yet out of necessity one had to select. Beyond good and evil was all right in theory, but to go on living one had to select: some were kinder than others, some were simply more interested in you, and sometimes the outwardly beautiful and inwardly cold were necessary. The kinder ones fucked better, really, and after you were around them a while they seemed beautiful because they were.”

Hope you feel better now. As you were.